Classic Films

• The Ken Loach Collection Volume 1 | DVD | (03/09/2007) from £47.14   |  Saving you £14.61 (32.19%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Available together in a box set for the first time experience the drama and intensity from some truly ground-breaking and memorable British Cinema. This box set comes complete with 2 hours of extras across the 8 discs a 16 page companion booklet featuring introductions from Ken Loach himself and Barry Hines quotes and production notes and a bonus DVD containing a documentary profiling Loach plus the theatrical for his new cinematic masterpiece 'It's A Free World'. As if

• The Blue Angel | DVD | (17/09/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Two things make it impossible to consign Josef von Sternberg's seedily atmospheric 1930 masterpiece The Blue Angel to the archives of museum land: it was the first film to put Marlene Dietrich in front of an international audience; and it features a towering performance from Emil Jannings as the professor whose fall from grace is precipitated by his obsession with Dietrich's archly vampish showgirl Lola-Lola. On both counts The Blue Angel remains a potent, vibrant work which still has moments of real relevance. Dietrich's performance is indeed hypnotic: von Sternberg lights her face and exposed flesh--shoulders and thighs--in a way that clearly indicates the erotic charge she generates among the men in the Blue Angel night club, and in Jennings in particular. Before our eyes his repressed, puritanical self-will disintegrates and his fate is sealed. The pivotal moment is, of course, when Dietrich teases her audience with "Falling in Love Again", her stockinged and suspendered legs astride a beer barrel, a top hat rakishly on her head. It would become the signature tune of her cabaret act in later years but here she delivers it with a far less studied, throwaway cheeriness; how, indeed, can it be her fault if men cluster around her like moths around a flame? This is the raw material on which an icon was built, but there is much else to fascinate in the film itself: you can still smell the pungent grim reality of a trouper's life on the road; and the professor's pathetic efforts to control his class of unruly boys still resonates today... this is an essential piece of film history. On the DVD: The Blue Angel is presented in its German and English-language versions, both restored and digitally remastered. As far as the sound quality is concerned this is of limited benefit since there is a great deal of distortion on both versions. But thanks to the picture restoration we can see how von Sternberg treats Dietrich: her face becomes a radiant, mocking pool of light always in contrast with the dark, grainy characters around her. The English version (in truth, only the Dietrich/Jannings scenes were shot in each language) is slightly pruned, missing a key scene in which the professor's repressed sensitivity is established at the very beginning. So despite some erratic sub-titling, the German version remains definitive. And it also reveals the worldliness of the original lyrics to Friedrich Hollander's classic songs: "I Was Made for Love from Head to Toe" suggests a rather more robust attitude than the vague whimsy of "Falling in Love Again." A final thought: releasing films of this importance on DVD surely creates an opportunity to put them in context by including documentary and factual resources, but this release has no extras of any kind. At the very least it cries out for an authoritative commentary. --Piers Ford

• Those People Next Door | DVD | (24/03/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Twiggs are a typical working-class family: Sam (Jack Warner) and Mary (Marjorie Rhodes) are trying to bring their family up in the shadow of the Blitz whilst taking everything in good humour. Their neighbours Joe (Charles Victor) and Emma (Gladys Henson) are constantly in the Twiggs' house borrowing a cup of sugar or using their Anderson shelter and between them the two working class families put the world to rights. But when their daughter falls for an upper class RAF pilot the Twiggs are asked by his mother Lady Diana Stephens to tell their daughter to call the romance off as the social gap between the families is too large. Incensed by Lady Diana's offer of money Sam Twigg throws her out of the house. But events take a sudden turn as the war enters the Twiggs' own living room. Will the two families manage to overcome their disdain for each other and let true love find its way?

• I'm No Angel | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £5.00   |  Saving you £4.99 (99.80%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Mae West's reputation for tweaking the noses of film censors was well-established by the time she made I'm No Angel generally considered her most successful picture. The frank-speaking blonde bombshell delivered some of her most classic double entendres in this 1933 film her second consecutive outing opposite the luminous Cary Grant. The two had made She Done Him Wrong earlier that year and in I'm No Angel West does Grant wrong again to hilarious effect. West plays her typical floozy a carnival dancer who escapes a murder charge and cozies her way into high society where she famously tells her maid: ""Beulah peel me a grape."" Eventually she wins Grant then drops him and sues him for breach of contract. Rarely has a more intelligent sexually powerful and dominant female figure been seen on screen and West is at her sizzling comic peak. Already a major entertainment figure West rode the popularity of I'm No Angel to greater notoriety but she never again teamed up with a male superstar so successfully. West's movies were among those most responsible for bringing a new era of censorship after the early 1930s.

• Films That Define A Decade: '70s | Blu Ray | (22/08/2016) from £28.92   |  Saving you £-19.33 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.59

  They say the ˜60s really happened in the ˜70s. Bell-bottoms and disco took over, while films from the ˜70s captured the free-spirited movement of the decade in many ways. There was the LA disaster epic Earthquake; pushing all boundaries came the cult classic National Lampoon's Animal House; there was the rip-roaring road trip Smokey and the Bandit; and crime caper The Sting starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

• LES COUSINS | DVD | (08/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Made barely a year after Claude Chabrol's debut Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins featured the earlier film's same starring pair of Jean-Claude Brialy and Grard Blain, here reversing the good-guy/bad-guy roles of the previous picture. The result is a simmering, venomous study in human temperament that not only won the Golden Bear at the 1959 Berlin Film Festival, but also drew audiences in droves, and effectively launched Chabrol's incredible fifty-year-long career. A gripping and urbane examination of city and country, ambition and ease, Les Cousins continues to captivate and shock audiences with its brilliant scenario, the performances of Brialy and Blain, and the assuredness of Chabrol's precocious directorial hand. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Claude Chabrol's breakthrough film in a beautiful new Gaumont restoration on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time in the UK. Special Features: Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio New and improved English subtitles Original theatrical trailer A 47-minute documentary about the making of the film L'Homme qui vendit la Tour Eiffel [The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower], Chabrol's 1964 short film A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; a new and exclusive translation of a rare text about actress Franoise Vatel provided for this release by its author, the filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more

• Films That Define A Decade: '80s | Blu Ray | (22/08/2016) from £15.00   |  Saving you £-1.54 (-11.40%)   |  RRP £13.46

  The excessive ˜80s... where everyone had huge hairdos and massive shoulder pads, mobile phones were the size of bricks and the movies were larger than life. We had John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd starring as The Blues Brothers; An American Werewolf in London took horror to new heights; a young Al Pacino thrilled as the iconic Scarface; and Kurt Russell challenged shape-shifting aliens in The Thing.

• Antigone | DVD | (01/01/1975) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  With fierce originality, this powerful adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy presents a world of honour, treachery and fateful consequences. Acclaimed actress, Genevieve Bujold, skilfully combines elements of zealotry and idealism in her affecting portrait of Antigone. Jean Anouilh's retelling of Antigone stages the inescapably wrenching, central confrontation between Antigone and Creon by presenting Miss Bujold and Mr. Weaver seated at a long, executive-suite table - a hallmark of Anouilh's play. The New York Times critic, John J. O'Connor, lauded this Antigone as well acted, well directed and beautifully staged.

• D.O.A. | DVD | (02/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Edmund O'Brian - DOA

• Dracula (1931)/House of Dracula/Dracula | DVD | (09/04/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Dracula (1931 & 1999 version with new soundtrack by Phillip Glass) : Although there have been numerous screen versions of Bram Stoker's classic tale none is more enduring than this 1931 original. Towering ominously among the shadows of the Carpathian Mountains Castle Dracula strikes fear in the hearts of the Transylvanian villagers below... Illuminated by the haunting presence of Bela Lugosi as the Count Tod Browning's direction makes full use of crisp black and white cinem

• My Blue Heaven | DVD | (05/11/2012) from £7.37   |  Saving you £2.62 (35.55%)   |  RRP £9.99

  My Blue Heaven is an entertaining musical romp with a rich story, as well as plenty of comedy and romance! Kitty (Betty Grable) and Jack (Dan Dailey) are a popular husband-and-wife entertainer team making their move from radio to television. However, as exciting as this progress is, they believe their lives will be complete when they can start a family. But when they decide to adopt - a process fraught with problems and disappointments - they are ultimately rewarded with an overabunda...

• 13 Rue Madeleine | DVD | (03/05/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A group of Allied agents prepare to infiltrate German intelligence in Paris to find the whereabouts of a secret rocket site during World War 2. Their task is made even more hazardous by the fact that one of them is a double agent...

• The Plow That Broke The Plains | DVD | (02/01/2007) from £10.45   |  Saving you £2.54 (19.60%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Pare Lorentz's The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) are landmark American documentary films. Aesthetically, they break new ground in seamlessly marrying pictorial imagery, symphonic music, and poetic free verse, all realized with supreme artistry. Ideologically, they indelibly encapsulate the strivings of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 'New Deal'. Virgial Thomson's cores for both films are among the most famous ever composed for the movies. Aaron Copland praised the music for The Plow fit its 'frankness and openness of feeling', calling it 'fresher, more simple, and more personal' than the Hollywood norm. He called the music for The River 'a lesson in how to treat to treat Americana'.The Plow that Broke the Plains - 27:02.The River - 31:23.

• Dracula Prince Of Darkness | DVD | (29/10/2001) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-14.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As the third in what became a series of eight, Prince of Darkness was distinguished among the Hammer Dracula movies for several reasons. It was the third and last directed by Terence Fisher and his familiarity with the mythos and studio practices meant the rushed production still came out looking spectacular in places. Moving into the tail end of the 1960s, Hammer looked for ways of cost cutting: the film's dramatic finale on a frozen river takes place on a two-for-one set being used simultaneously for another shoot. This was also the series entry that included a substitute for the Renfield character missing from the first movie. Thorley Walters as Ludwig is a colourful cameo and that's also all that can be said of Christopher Lee. Despite top billing, the mute monster occupies but a fraction of the overall on-screen time. The real frights come from gaunt butler Klove who scares the life (literally) out of hapless travellers Alan, Charles, Helen and Diana. Surely their fate would ensure no-one else took the mountain pass to Carlsbad? But only two years later, audiences discovered Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. On the DVD: apart from scene access there's nothing making use of the DVD format here. The 2.55:1 presentation is certainly welcome, and the mono audio somehow feels appropriate. --Paul Tonks

• Time Without Pity | DVD | (21/04/2008) from £10.44   |  Saving you £2.55 (24.43%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Following his blacklisting in the McCarthy witch hunts the American director Joseph Losey worked in England and fashioned this gritty noir thriller about David Graham (Michael Redgrave) an alcoholic father who has 24 hours to prove that his son is not guilty of murder and save him from the gallows. Robert Stanford (Leo McKern) is a car dealer who knows the truth but continues to keep Graham on the defensive. As the clock ticks mercilessly Graham fights a battle against both Stanford as he tries to save his sons life. Time Without Pity was Losey's first film under his own name and retains the director's striking blend of drama and social commentary. The film was also photographed by the legendary Freddie Francis of Elephant Man fame.

• Shadow Of A Doubt | Blu Ray | (23/09/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A favourite uncle comes to visit his sister's family in a small Californian town. He is actually on the run from the police who know him as the Merry Widow murderer. The niece suspects something and almost loses her life. Special Features: Beyond Doubt: The Making of Hitchcock's Favorite Film Production Drawings by Art Director Robert Boyle Production Photographs Shadow of a Doubt Theatrical Trailer Centennial Trailer

• The Family Secret (Standard Edition) | Blu Ray | (22/04/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Lee J Cobb (Sirocco) and John Derek (Knock on Any Door) star in The Family Secret, a classic film noir set in the legal world. Law student David (Derek) kills his best friend in self-defence, confessing to his father (Cobb), a criminal lawyer, who advises him to go to the police. His mother, however, tells him to keep quiet, and his moral dilemma deepens further when an innocent man is accused of the killing, potentially facing the death penalty. Produced by Humphrey Bogart's Santana Pictures, and directed by Henry Levin (Convicted), The Family Secret is a riveting exploration of guilt and family tensions. Product Features High Definition remaster Original mono audio Audio commentary with professor and film scholar Jason A Ney (2022) The Negro Sailor (1945, 27 mins): WWII documentary short film, directed by Henry Levin and conceived as a recruitment tool for the United States Navy The Big Moment (1954, 26 mins): short film produced by the United Jewish Appeal, starring John Derek Image gallery: promotional and publicity material New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• On The Buses - Series 1 - Episodes 1 To 3 | DVD | (15/07/2002) from £6.97   |  Saving you £3.02 (43.33%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set around a London bus depot, On the Buses starred Reg Varney as Stan, an ageing bachelor and driver of the No.11 bus who still lives with his Mum (Cicely Courtneidge), his plain sister Olive (Anna Karen) and disgruntled brother-in-law Arthur (Michael Robbins). At work, he fraternises with the laddish and lecherous Jack (Bob Grant), with whom he pursues innumerable (and improbable) giggly, mini-skirted "clippies" (conductors) and cheeks the beady-eyed and punctilious bus inspector, Blakey (Steven Lewis) This first series was broadcast in black and white in 1969. Much of the comedy derives from gender role reversal--Stan and Arthur forced to do the household chores when Olive and Mum fall ill ("Family Flu"); "The Canteen", in which the busmen decide to run the canteen themselves; or "The Darts Match", in which Stan and Jack are bested at darts by--imagine--a pair of dollybird clippies. Despite its immense popularity, On the Buses hasn't dated well. Like the buses themselves, the jokes don't arrive very often and when they do, they're visible a long way off. The studio audience whoops cathartically at anything remotely alluding to sex, making you wonder at the repressed nature of British society in 1969. In later decades it would come to be treasured as somewhat creaky kitsch by audiences nostalgic for an age of politically incorrect innocence. On the DVD: On the Buses has no extra features here. The original black and white versions have scrubbed up reasonably well, although defects such as fading sound and poor dubbing have proven beyond amendment. --David Stubbs

• In Old Chicago | DVD | (02/07/2012) from £4.98   |  Saving you £5.01 (100.60%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The O'Leary brothers -- honest Jack and roguish Dion -- become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.

• LE BEAU SERGE | DVD | (08/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Grard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy star in the first of their collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol. The director's masterful feature debut - ironic, funny, unsparing - is a revelation: another of that rare breed of film where the dusty formula might be used in full sincerity: Le Beau Serge marks the beginning of the Chabrol touch. In this first feature film of the French New Wave, one year before Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows, the dandyish Franois (Brialy, of Godard's A Woman Is a Woman, Rohmer's Claire's Knee, and countless other cornerstones of 20th-century French cinema) takes a holiday from the city to his home village of Sardent, where he reconnects with his old chum Serge (Blain), now a besotted and hopeless alcoholic, and sly duplicitous carnal Marie (Bernadette Lafont). A grave triangle forms, and a tragic slide ensues. From Le Beau Serge onward up to his final film Bellamy in 2009, the revered Chabrol would come to leave a significant and lasting impression upon the French cinema - frequently with great commercial success. It is with great pride that we present Le Beau Serge, the kickstart of the Nouvelle Vague and of Chabrol's enormous body of work, on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK for the first time. Special Features: Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio New and improved English subtitles Original theatrical trailer A 56-minute documentary about the making of the film L'Avarice [Avarice], Chabrol's 1962 short film A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more